The world's biggest companies that are still family owned

The world's largest family-controlled companies

When we think of family businesses, we tend to conjure up images of homely convenience stores and humble neighborhood pizza parlors, small-scale operations competing with huge faceless multinationals. Yet a surprising number of these massive global enterprises are themselves family controlled.

Click ahead to see the 25 largest family-owned firms on the planet, according to the latest Global Family Business Index, compiled by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

According to the Center for Family Business at the University of St. Gallen, a privately held firm is considered family-owned if a family controls more than 50% of the voting rights, while a publicly held company is defined as family-owned if a family holds at least a 32% share of the voting rights. All company revenue figures quoted in this piece have been provided by the university.